THE ICE PICK

Guide to Fiction Writing, by Phyllis A. Whitney. Boston, The Writer. $12.95.

We are always interested in how other writers "do it." What are their techniques and working methods? Can we learn their secrets and shortcuts? And adapt or copy them?

This clearly written and easily accessible book tells how best-selling mystery and romantic suspense author Phyllis Whitney plans and plots her novels, how she produces a desired emotional response in her readers, and how she uses the four key ingredients of "problem, purpose, conflict, and goal" to create tension and suspense, which she considers "vital to every kind of fiction writing."

In Part One, "Methods and Process," Whitney explains how she keeps her material organized, using looseleaf notebooks as the basis for all of her novels. If you’ve always just tossed scraps of paper with descriptions of your characters, bits of dialogue, ideas for scenes, newspaper clippings you can use in your story, sketched maps, pictures torn from magazines, plus typed chapters and old drafts into a folder or a box, and then spent time trying to find what you wanted later or given up in despair, you might want to try her notebook idea. She uses a simple system that you can tailor for yourself. And in addition to organizing the material for the novel itself, she includes a "Calendar" section where she can keep track of when she started and how much progress she is making day by day, as well as a page for title ideas, and one to keep track of the lengths of chapters and what page they start on in the manuscript. If you are working on two or more projects, you can have as many notebooks as you need. And the notebooks are helpful in writing short stories, too.

In Part Two, "Technique," she explains things like how to begin writing, choose viewpoint, create believable characters, write flashbacks and transitions, and revise what we’ve written. She considers rewriting to be essential and lists fifteen weaknesses for us to check our manuscripts against. For example, "Are the time and place of your action always clear? Not only in the opening scene, where it’s very important to orient the reader, but all the way through. Especially at the beginning of a chapter or a new scene."

"The basics of story-telling . . . is the one element in fiction writing that can be taught. No one can give you the drive to write. No one can give you the special talent you’ll need. But talent can be developed . . . and helped to grow. . . . [Rules] aren’t set in concrete, but are only guidelines. Once you understand how to hold and interest a reader, how to build a sound plot, you can push out in any direction." The only rule Whitney gives that you should never break is: "Never give up."

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. Nov. 1998. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Feb. 2000.}